Wednesday, September 30, 2015

It’s that time of year again, where days grow short, trees grow bare, and nightmares come fast and furious in 90-minute intervals….

It’s time for SCARE-A-THON 2015.

As faithful readers know, for the past several years I have dedicated my October viewing energies to various organizations deserving of some “terror lovin’ care.” Thanks to generous, like-minded souls, we have raised thousands of dollars for over two dozen different groups. This year, I have selected Planned Parenthood, which provides vital health care and education to women all over the country, and Chicago’sGreenhouse Shelter, a domestic abuse shelter which provides safe refuge and support for women and their children taking their first brave steps to ending abuse.

In the spirit of a walk-a-thon or read-a-thon, I am asking for your assistance on a per-movie pledge basis with a prospective goal of 100 movies that I plan to watch. (For example, a five-cent pledge would result in an approximate $5.00 donation.) Of course, you are welcome to make a lower – or higher – per-movie pledge, or make a straightforward donation of whatever amount you deem viable.

September found me in West Virginia, rehearsing for GVT’s production of Hamlet and armed with a bevy of civilian titles that I’d been meaning to catch up with for years. During the downtime between bouts of spouting iambic pentameter, I worked my way through the DVD wallet. Didn’t manage to see quite as many as I’d hoped prior to the madness that is the October Horror Movie Challenge (this Shakespeare stuff ain’t the easiest stuff in the world to memorize, plus I was doing all the recaps from Jan-Aug), but we still knocked out a few.

Heck, we even managed to provide the full Fool’s Views capsule reviews effect for the first time this year – gotta get warmed up for SCARE-A-THON 2015, after all.

As always, feel free to leave your two cents worth – we’ll make sure you get some change back.

Sunday, September 27, 2015

As July rolled around, I found myself totally overwhelmed with my NASM personal
training certification studies, trying in vain to memorize muscular insertion
points (no, that’s not a euphemism) and which amino acids were
essential and which weren’t. I finally had to call for reinforcements.

For the
first time in the history of the H101 blog, other people's names were on the
byline for the reviews, but happily those names were none other than Matt Wedge
and Jason Coffman, two of the wickedest scribblers to be found, both of whom
happen to live in my own darn zip code. (insert obligatory “Chicago’s horror
community rocks” shout-out here.) My load was lightened, my personal views
ebbed slightly, the reviews slowed to a trickle and then….

I passed that f*****g test. And life got a little better. I
mean, I had to start memorizing lines for Greenbrier Valley Theatre’s
production of Hamlet the next day,
but I could actually justify watching a few movies JUST FOR FUN. Like, you
know, BATMAN and RETURN OF THE LIVING DEAD and MISSION-FRICKING-IMPOSSIBLE.

As always, feel free to leave your two cents worth – we’ll
make sure you get some change back.

Enjoy!

Some people never go anywhere without their HORROR 101. These people usually die before the credits.

Saturday, September 26, 2015

That was July. Which is too bad, because I would have like to have given more
virtual ink to three pretty great discoveries in the horror department which I
had previously heard very little about (Honeymoon being the exception, having
shown up on several best-of lists come the end of 2014). Long Pigs is one of
the best faux horror docs I’ve seen, ranking just below Man Bites Dog, which
with it shares more than a few similarities, while the terrific horror/comedy All
About Evil I had only heard of as “that Peaches Christ movie,” even though the
cult personality is only featured in a few scenes. Anyway, all three are well
worth tracking down.

In the civilian department, if there’s a more mindfuckingly
chilling ending to be found than that at the end of Denis Villeneuve’s Enemy, I’m all
ears. Combining this with Prisoners, End of Watch, and last year’s
should-have-been-nominated Nightcrawler, I’m finally convinced Jake Gyllenhaal is the
real deal. Big thanks to John Pata for these recommendations, as well as for the completely underrated Disconnect. Check 'em out, sez I.

As always, feel free to leave your two cents worth – we’ll
make sure you get some change back.

Enjoy!

You really should consider subscribing to the H101 blog. I really recommend it.

Friday, September 25, 2015

As we reached the halfway point of 2015, all the good things started coming in
twos. Primarily in the form of Shout! Factory’s double dose of double features
(already having graced fans with the “animals attack” quartet of The Food of
the Gods, Empire of the Ants, Frogs, and Jaws of Satan, as well as the Carrie
and Ghoulies two-fers). Not to be outdone, Arrow decided to lay the entire
five-film Stray Cat Rock series on us, while a newly resuscitated
Artsploitation served up
Horsehead, House of 100 Eyes, and Der Samurai in one fell swoop.

In short, there was no rest for the wicked, and it was all
we could do to keep up with things, considering we were then juggling Mockingbird performances and an
ever-increasing class load in pursuit of my NASM personal training
certification. Stamina was definitely the order of the day, with few
opportunities to watch anything that wasn’t “assigned.”

The upside to this requisite reviewing is that I get to cut
down on the apologizing for this particular installment (although we did
finally make time to watch yet another double feature loaned to us back in
November by Indy blood brother Craig J. Clark – the only two flicks that I didn’t
review… because I didn’t have to).

As always, feel free to leave your two cents worth – we’ll make sure you get
some change back.

Thursday, September 24, 2015

Remember those April showers? Yeah, May is when the wheels really came off, as
Shout! Factory, Severin, Synapse, and Arrow all decided to release a wealth of
home video gold that all landed in my lap at once… just as I was starting
rehearsals for To Kill a Mockingbird
with Oak Park Festival Theatre. Of course.

Then an impromptu movie party at Kitley’s Krypt turned into
an impromptu Gobblerfest hereafter to be known as Turkey Day in May. And to
further compound my mirthful misery, the month kicked off with the 3rd Annual
Chicago Critics Film Festival, which saw me at the historic Music Box Theatre
every night for the entire week, tallying 20 flicks in all.

The CCFF marked the first time I’d seen a movie in the
cinema since January (WTF), and the month ended as it began, taking in the magnificence
splendor that was Mad Max: Fury Road
and Ex Machina, as well as the Chicago Cinema Society's screening of Der Samurai.

I also shared the
mike with Kicking the Seat’s Ian Simmons to discuss the train wreck that is The Human Centipede 3, a sad affair
since both of us are/were big fans of the first two installments. You can hear
our grousing HERE.

As always, feel free to leave your two cents worth – we’ll
make sure you get some change back.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Oh, the April showers of Blu-ray powers had us camped out in front of the tube
more than usual, leading to a few movie gatherings to share the pleasure and
the pain. While most of the reissues occupy the schlockier terrain of the
playground, and the current crop of indie releases had more disappointments
than not, there were a few bright spots in the mix. Shawn Holmes’ Memory
Lane is a master class in making the most of minimal resources – definitely
worth checking out. I also dived headlong into Bert I. Gordon’s classick of 70s
gigantism in service of an essay for a new “animals attack” book being edited
by our Belgian mistress of the night, Vanessa Morgan.

We also had the pleasure of having phone conversations with
directors Mark L. Lester and Jeff Burr in conjunction with the Blu-ray releases
of Class of 1984 and From a Whisper to a Scream respectively. The transcribed
results of said chats can be found by clicking on the linked titles above.

In the civilian quarter, the revisiting of two long-time favorites sparked
interest in sampling an earlier offering from their lead actors’ respective oeuvres.
In this case, Escape from New York
led to finally seeking out Kurt Russell’s decidedly unDisney portrayal of Charles Whitman in The Deadly Tower and The Food of the Gods to Marjoe Gortner’s
riveting central turn in the eponymous documentary Marjoe. Oh, and Duke Mitchell’s Gone
with the Pope is simply sublime in its rough-hewn 70s independent aesthetic
– thanks to Jason Coffman for inviting me to the party.

As always, feel free to leave your two cents worth – we’ll
make sure you get some change back.

Tuesday, September 22, 2015

March was a light month in terms of knocking out the flicks, but it did have
the highlight of showcasing what will likely be my favorite horror offering of
the year.

It Follows demonstrated a level of foreboding, atmospheric dread that
I haven’t experienced in quite some time, with a brilliantly simple,
uncluttered horror premise. I never thought it would resonate for the mainstream, however, and was legitimately surprised when it earned a wide release. Sure, the hype
machine managed to ruin it for many hardcore fright fans, but it delivered the
goods in my book, and I’m happy to keep recommending it. (Especially since the
rest of the month’s genre selections were less than select.)

And with Captain America: The Winter Soldier, we managed to knock out yet another Redford flick, the very one that sparked my interest in revisiting his onscreen output since it was supposedly an anomaly for Hollywood's golden boy to be playing a villain. Of course, anyone who was paying even the slightest bit of attention should have realized that even Sir Bob's "heroes" are a flawed and cranky bunch, and he's played an out-and-out S.O.B. on more than one occasion.

As before, feel free to leave your two cents worth about any
of the titles below – we’ll make sure you get some change back.

Monday, September 21, 2015

As you can see below, February ended up acting as the
rejoinder to last year’s 16-film exploration of Robert Redford’s onscreen career, knocking out another half dozen, including three first time views.
Horror-wise, it was all Shout! Factory and an end-of-month Share the Scare
gathering of Chicago fright friends that slayed the day.

As before, if you have any questions or thoughts about any
titles that didn’t earn any rambling, start the convo and off we’ll go. Give us
your two cents, and we’ll make sure you get some change back.

Sunday, September 20, 2015

2015 has been a very weird year in and out of the Doc’s office.
Due to time constraints, I haven’t given any critical attention to films not
specifically submitted for review; as such, posting the weekly Fool’s Views kind
of fell by the wayside.

However, in this brief calm before the storm that is
the annual October Horror Movie Challenge/Scare-A-Thon, I found myself with
just enough time to catch up in the cataloging of titles consumed over the past
nine months. And, being the generous soul that I am, I figured I’d post them on
the blog, as is, in monthly blocks, for your perusal. Without any opining, of
course, this is simply a matter of record as opposed to an array of
recommendations or admonitions – the very definition of trivia. But hey, there’s
a place for that as well, I suppose. This seems like the place.

There are, as you will see, numerous links to extended reviews. However, if you have any questions about any specific titles that didn't manage to garner any virtual ink, I’m happy
to offer up any feeble retroactive thoughts I can conjure. In other words, your
two cents will still get you some change back.

Monday, September 14, 2015

Wet Hot American Summer set a high bar for genre parodies in that in addition to being a parody, it also acted as both a loving tribute to a very specific subgenre (early ’80s “summer camp” movies) and a respectable entry into that subgenre itself despite its bizarre humor. There have been a few similar parodies in the years since – Black Dynamite immediately comes to mind as one particularly successful example – but no one has come as close to replicating Wet Hot’s mix of parody and tribute as Canadian comedy group Astron 6.

About Me

Well, during the day I move among you as mild-mannered Aaron Christensen, Chicago actor. But at night, when the popcorn pops full, I transform into my alternate personality Dr. AC, hopeless horror movie nerd-cum-Ambassador of Horror.
However, despite my inclination to discuss monsters that pervade, aliens that invade, creatures of the night, vampires that bite...I'm actually the nicest guy you'll ever meet.